"I asked not to be disturbed, Banster." The Dwarf sighed without opening his eyes. "Don't tell me it's about that stuffed Waterman again."
He'd grown fat. And older. The curly red hair was already turning gray, early for a Dwarf. Most of them lived to be at least a hundred, and Valiant was barely sixty, unless he'd also lied about his age.
"No, a stuffed Waterman isn't quite what I'm after," Jacob said, pointing his pistol at the curly head. "But three years ago, I paid for services I never received."
Valiant nearly choked on his cigar. He looked at Jacob as dumbfoundedly as one would at a visitor one had left to the mercy of a stampeding herd of Unicorns.
"Jacob Reckless!" he said, panting.
"Well, I never! You actually remember my name."
The Dwarf dropped his cigar, and his hand reached under the desk, but he quickly pulled his stubby fingers back as Jacob slit his tailored sleeve with the saber.
"Careful, now!' Jacob said. "You don't need both your arms to take me to the Fairies. And you don't need your ears and your nose, either. Hands behind you head. Now!"
Valiant obeyed. As he raised his hands, his mouth twisted into far too broad a smile.
"Jacob!" he purred. "What is this? Of course I knew you weren't dead. After all, everybody's heard your story. Jacob Reckless, the fortunate mortal who was kept by the Red Fairy for a year. Every male creature in the land, be he Dwarf, human, or Goyl, is green with envy at the mere thought of it. Go on: Admit it! Whom do you have to thank for that? Evenaugh Valiant. Had I warned you about the Unicorns, you would've been turned into a thistle or a fish, like any other uninvited visitor. But not even the Red Fairy can resist a man who's lying, helpless, in his own blood."
Jacob had to admire the Dwarf's brazen logic.
"Tell me!" Valiant whispered across his oversize desk without even a hint of remorse. "How was she? And how did you manage to get away?"
Jacob grabbed the Dwarf by his bespoke lapels and pulled him out from behind his desk. "This is my onetime offer: I won't shoot you, and in return you'll take me to their valley once again, but this time you show me how to get past the Unicorns."
"What?" Valiant tried to wriggle free, but Jacob's pistol quickly changed his mind. "It's a two-day ride, at least!" he whined. "I can't just leave the business!"
Jacob simply shoved him toward the door.
The two secretaries were whispering in the wardrobe. Valiant glared in their direction as he plucked his hat from the coatrack by the door.
"My prices have increased considerably in the past three years," he said.
"I'll let you live," Jacob replied. "That's more of a raise than you deserve."
Valiant gave him a pitying smile as he adjusted his hat in the glass of his front door. Like most Dwarfs, he was partial to black top hats, which added a fair number of inches to his stature.
"You seem to be desperate to get back to your old flame," he purred, "and the price always rises with the desperation of the customer."
In reply, Jacob tapped the muzzle of his gun against the Dwarf's hat. "Trust me," he said, "this customer is desperate enough to shoot you at a moment's notice."
20
Too Much
Fox smelled golden revulsion, petrified loathing, frozen love. The entrance of the cave exhaled it all, and her fur bristled when she found Clara's tracks not the grass in front of it. She had stumbled more than walked, and her tracks led toward the trees growing behind the cave. Fox had heard Jacob warn Clara about those trees, but she'd rushed toward them as if their ominous shadows were exactly what she was looking for.
Clara's scent was the same one Fox smelled on herself whenever she lost her fur. Girl. Woman. So much more vulnerable. Strong and yet weak. A heart that knew no armor. The scent told Fox about all the things she feared and from which the fur protected her. Clara's hasty steps wrote them onto the dark soil, and Fox didn't need her nose to know why Clara was running. She herself had tried to run away from pain before.
The hazel bushes and wild apple trees were harmless, but between them grew trunks with bark as spiny as the shell of a chestnut. Bird-trees. Under their branches the sunlight dissolved into a gloomy brown, and Clara had stumbled right into the wooden claws of one of them. She screamed for Jacob, but he was far away. The tree curled its roots around her arms and ankles, and its feathery servants already descended on her body, their plumage as white as virgin snow, birds with sharp beaks and eyes like red berries.
Fox jumped among them, her teeth bared, deaf to their angry cries. She snapped one of the birds in midjump, before it could escape to the safety of the branches. She felt its heart racing between her jaws, but she did not bite; she just held on firmly, very firmly, until the tree let go of Clara with an angry groan.
The roots slid off Clara like snakes, and as she struggled back to her feet, they were already slipping beneath the autumn-brown leaves, where they would be in wait for their next victim. The other birds chattered angrily from the branches, ghostly white creatures among the yellowing foliage. But Fox held on to her quarry until Clara staggered to her side.
Her face was as white as the feathers that stuck to her dress. Fox could smell not only the mortal fear on her body but also the pain in her heart, raw, like a fresh wound.
They barely spoke a word on their way back to the cave. At one point Clara stopped, as if she could not go on, but then she did, wordlessly. When they reached the cave, she looked at the dark entrance as if she hoped to see Will there, but then she just crouched down in the grass next to the horses, with her back to the cave. She was unharmed, apart from a few small grazes on her throat and ankles, but Fox saw how ashamed she was, of her aching heart and for having run away.
Fox didn't want her to leave. She shifted her shape and put her arms around Clara, who pressed her face against the furry dress that so much resembled the vixen's coat.
"He doesn't love me anymore."
"He doesn't love anybody anymore," Fox whispered back. "He's forgetting who he is."
She knew how it felt. Another skin, another person. But the fur she had grown was soft and warm. The stone was hard and cold.
Clara looked toward the cave. Fox picked a feather from her hair.
"Don't leave!" Fox whispered to her. "Jacob will help him. You'll see."
If only he were back already.
21
His Brother's Keeper
As Jacob rode toward the cave, Fox came running to him. Will and Clara were nowhere to be seen.
"Will you look at that! That mangy vixen still following you around?" Valiant jeered as Jacob lifted him from the horse. Jacob had tied him with a silver chain, the only metal that Dwarfs could not snap like thread.
Jacob would not have been surprised if Fox had replied to Valiant's remark with a bite, but she seemed not to have even noticed the Dwarf. Something had happened. Her fur was standing on end, and she had some white feathers stuck to her back.
"You have to talk to your brother," she said while Jacob tied the Dwarf to a nearby tree.
"What happened?" Jacob cast a worried glance at the cave where Will was hiding, but Fox pointed toward the horses. Clara was there, sleeping in the shade of a beech. Her shirt was torn, and Jacob could see blood on her throat.
